The Mom Stop: Friends can be like family

Lydia Seabol Avant More Content Now

Tuesday

Nov 7, 2017 at 10:32 AMNov 7, 2017 at 10:32 AM

I started taking down my Halloween decorations on Nov. 1 — carefully packing away the life-size skeleton that has sat in the Adirondack chair in my yard all October, pulling up the ghost yard stakes and Styrofoam headstones, stacking the giant, furry spiders that have decorated my rose trestle during the last month.

The pumpkins stay out, as it’s officially turkey season. It’s time to take out that turkey platter and carefully unfold the tissue-paper turkey decoration that sat on my grandma’s dining room table for so many Thanksgiving holidays.

My grandparents were Minnesota transplants who moved to the South in the 1960s for work. They didn’t have family close by — Minnesota was simply too far away. But what they did have were close friends — other Midwestern transplants who also moved to north Alabama to work for the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Soon after my grandparents came to Alabama with their three young children, they started having progressive Thanksgiving dinners with four other couples and their children. One house would offer appetizers, the main meal was served at another home, followed by dessert at the last house. The process would take all day, starting mid-morning and ending at night.

It was a tradition that continued for more than 30 years. Eventually, the couples retired, their children grew up, got married and had children of their own — my generation. I never had cousins nearby, but because we got together each Thanksgiving, I thought the other grandkids were my cousins; they were the closest thing to it.

As the adults prepared the food, we’d play on the piano in the formal living room or play board games in the basement. One year during a very competitive game of hide-and-seek, I persuaded a younger girl to hide in the downstairs washing machine, only she got stuck. There wasn’t any butter on the dinner table that Thanksgiving because they had used what butter they had to grease her free.

As I take out my turkey decorations each year, I am reminded of the intricate table décor of the Thanksgivings of my youth, with wicker cornucopias, felt turkey napkin rings, placeholders with the names carefully written on them in script.

The people who traveled from one home to the next and gathered around the various tables each Thanksgiving weren’t really relatives, but they were close to it.

Over the years, my grandparents’ generation has started to pass away and very few of the original progressive Thanksgiving couples are still alive. But in July, we gathered once more to celebrate the 90th birthday of my grandfather’s best friend. Although my granddad and many of their friends are no longer alive, their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren celebrated over dinner.

As my mother’s generation prepared the food, I stood outside with the people I once called my cousins — now grown — watching our young children play horseshoe and corn hole, some of them climbing in the low branches of a Magnolia tree nearby.

Although many of our kids had never met — the progressive dinners stopped when I was in college — having the kids run around and play felt natural. Even though years have passed, they still feel like family.

I am reminded of that each year each November. As I carefully unfurl the folded tissue paper turkey and pull down the cornucopia from the attic, I am reminded that sometimes, friends can be family.

I am so thankful for that fact.

— Lydia Seabol Avant writes The Mom Stop for The Tuscaloosa News. Reach her at lydia.seabolavant@tuscaloosanews.com.